


Holding On to You Holding On to Me

by gwyneth rhys (gwyneth)



Series: Interludes [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Captain America: Civil War Trailer, Interlude, Kissing, Love, M/M, Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-09
Updated: 2015-12-09
Packaged: 2018-05-05 21:43:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5391455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gwyneth/pseuds/gwyneth%20rhys
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve stares at his back, the terrible architecture of Bucky’s suffering written on the left shoulder and side. Reaches over and with fingertips brushes each rung along the ladder of his spine.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Holding On to You Holding On to Me

**Author's Note:**

> This is an interlude within the Captain America: Civil War trailer, so spoilers ahoy, although it's actually probably more based on the reports of the footage screened at D23 in August than anything else. And of course it's completely and utterly conjecture that will no doubt be proven ridiculous.

Bucky’s sitting on the edge of the bed when Steve wakes, staring at the far wall, hands clutching the mattress. Steve tenses at the blankness in his eyes; perhaps he’s been like that for some time. Shoulders rounded down, light blue boxer briefs and nothing else, bare feet flat to the floor. The quiet reveals the soft mechanical whir of the metal arm as his hand clenches and unclenches; slow deep breaths, sniper breaths; the soft voices of Sam, Wanda, and Scott downstairs.

He wants to say: _I’m so glad you’re safe and here with me._

_I was so afraid I would never get you back._

He wants to say: _I love you._

Steve sits up in bed and says to Bucky’s back, “Good morning.” Bucky doesn’t turn, but the acknowledgement is there, despite himself. It’s not the back, or the shoulders, or the hips, or the arms Steve awakened to before the fall. But then, neither would his be to Bucky’s eyes, if Bucky remembers at all. 

But it is the Bucky he fell asleep with last night. Skin to skin, only touching, nothing more, the desperate act of holding on. He didn’t have to say: _I don’t expect you to stay here with me_. He couldn’t say: _I know you don’t remember everything we were to one another._ Once they’d arrived at this dilapidated house on the outskirts of Bucharest, worn and weary, everyone had claimed a space to sleep except Bucky, who wordlessly followed Steve to his. They’d washed up and Bucky had simply slid into the musty bed beside him.

Steve stares at his back, the terrible architecture of Bucky’s suffering written on the left shoulder and side. Reaches over and with fingertips brushes each rung along the ladder of his spine. Bucky drops his head, lets Steve slide his hand across the nape of his neck, down across his shoulder. Hair falling forward, casting shadows. The sun is filtering through the south-facing window curtains now, illuminating the room with a coppery glow.

Steve inches closer, sweeps Bucky’s hair to the side and Bucky drops his head in the same direction, exposing more of his neck. Lips gliding along warm skin, tasting the metallic tang of machinery that still clings to Bucky underneath the sweat and stale bedsheets. He could bottle this, inhale it like a drug. Bucky closes his eyes as Steve strokes his hair back again and again, rests his cheek against Steve’s head as Steve kisses his skin. 

He wants to say: _I remember this._

_I’ve never stopped thinking of you._

He says, his lips to Bucky’s ear, “Tell me to stop if that’s what you need.”

There’s only the sound of Bucky’s deep breaths, the soft voices downstairs, the motors in Bucky’s arm. Steve moves his hand from Bucky’s hair to cup his chin, and Bucky turns his head to the right where Steve can reach his lips with his own. Kisses spun like threads of a spiderweb: shimmery, intricate, delicate but strong and deep. Lips and tongues and teeth and breath. 

The raw hope and beauty of him undoes Steve, steals breath from his lungs—the beauty of Bucky’s face is the very essence of his heart. He’s survived all this time, through an ice age of solitude and torture, but he remembers. Maybe not this, maybe not everything, but it’s enough. Bucky opens his eyes and tsks at the wetness on Steve’s lashes, wipes the tears away with his fingers. 

He lets Steve bear him down to the bed. Steve wants to say: _We don’t have to do this._

_It’s enough to have you here with me._

He wants to say: _I could die right here and it would be enough._

He says, “I never hoped. I couldn’t let myself.”

Bucky sighs into his neck. “Remind me. What does it look like—love?”

 _Like this,_ Steve wants to say. “Like all the things I ever lost have come back to me.”

 

***

 

Bucky sits on the edge of the bed, listening to Steve softly rumbling his way out of sleep. He should have left the bedroom hours ago, but he couldn’t tear himself away from the sound, the feeling of someone else beside him, the comfort of Steve’s heat and breath. Just sitting, staring, though he knows it probably worries Steve. The constant state of vigilance Bucky has had to maintain, to ensure Hydra, the governments, whoever will pick up their pieces, can’t find him again makes sleep a luxury he must parcel out in the smallest of allotments. 

But Steve is here with him. He’s broken nearly every covenant but the one he seems to have with these few friends here in the house, just to be here with him, to keep him free and alive. He’s burned every bridge. Steve is still the fragments Bucky’s memory showed him that he was: he is still faultless and flawed, holy and exalted, and he makes Bucky holy and exalted too simply by connection. Bucky wants to mine his soul, pull every precious thing out of it he can and hoard it close to his heart. 

He wants to be wrapped in Steve’s arms and say: _Thank you._

He wants to say: _I would have come back to you eventually._

He says nothing instead.

Behind him, Steve says, “Good morning.” Below them he can hear Steve’s friends talking, moving around the house. It’s not the nicest bolt-hole he could have brought them to, but it’s functional, and more importantly, absolutely no one knows about it. When he’d followed Steve into this bedroom, he hadn’t known what to expect: would Steve be afraid of him so close? How could Bucky blame Steve if he was—he’d nearly killed him, he was an animal. Or maybe Bucky’d remembered wrong, maybe this, sharing a bed, keeping each other warm, was not their past. Worst of all: he’d remembered right, but Steve had moved on in this century without him.

Yet Steve’s fingers trace the notches of his backbone, the curve of his shoulder and his scars, sift gently through his hair. Bucky shivers and sighs: last night was real and true, not the product of his imagination, their skins and muscles and bones were mapped to one another’s again. The ground falls away underneath his feet, as sure as when he fell from the train, but Steve is here to catch him this time. Solid, an oak, or maybe a willow that bends and can’t be broken. Not like Bucky, all splintered and weak. 

“Tell me to stop if that’s what you need.” His voice is a recognition of desire, memory that tumbles through decades of loss.

Survival is not need, need is not want. He _wants_ this. Wants Steve. Turning his head to meet Steve’s mouth, Bucky sinks into Steve’s kiss. Feels a spark in his belly, a match struck and flaring into blue flame. When he pulls away he sees tears glittering on Steve’s eyelashes. This, Bucky remembers: Steve always wore his heart on his sleeve, it made him so vulnerable—and so dangerous.

They kiss, and kiss, and kiss some more. Bucky’s drunk on the scent of him, alive with the knowledge of him. Hand on the crest of Bucky’s hip, lips to the suprasternal notch at the base of his throat, right thigh grazing Bucky’s left kneecap. They fall back onto the bed and Steve says, “I never hoped. I couldn’t let myself.”

Bucky wants to say: _I didn’t even know how._

He wants to say: _I don’t remember everything, but I remember you._

He says, a plea, a wish, “Remind me. What does it look like—love?”

Steve’s face reminds Bucky of the low winter sun, soft and lustrous. “Like all the things I ever lost have come back to me.”

Steve is an arrow that pierces Bucky’s heart. Thunder rolls through his chest, constricting it, as severely as his arm was in that vise. Throat hot and rough with words he doesn’t recall. This is what love looks like, he knows: it looks like Steve.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Matt Kearney's All I Need.
> 
> Feedback is adored and [reblogs on Tumblr](http://teatotally.tumblr.com/post/134882516430/fic-holding-on-to-you-holding-on-to-me) are wonderful.


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